OFF: Litmus in Cambridge

[Jonathan Jarrett]

	Dear All,
		  Litmus played Cambridge for my birthday, which was 
kind of nice of them though they didn't know, and I thought I should do 
a review.

	This was a Cambridge Rocksoc gig, so the supports were at least 
interesting, because the guy who organises their gigs has odd contacts 
in weird places. That said, I ignored the first one and stayed in the 
pub part of the venue because it was full of people I hadn't seen for 
ages. The second band, Godsize, were a kind of doom hardcore effort who 
were quite impressive, and had a frontman who could handle heckles with 
the best of them, quite different persona in and out of songs. I'd see 
them again but I didn't feel the need to download their stuff from 
Myspace and so on, you know.

	Litmus were a while getting on stage, and seemed a little less 
organised than usual. I didn't take a setlist this time because Colin 
always has to correct mine, but it would e quite short because most of 
the songs they did play, `Tempest' excepted, were stretched out to 
include a lot of jamming, some of which was, er, more successful than 
the rest. In particular Simon seemed to be off on his own on guitar 
without really checking in with the band and this rather bled all the 
energy out of `Under the Sign', with which they closed. The set was all 
kind of like that, offhand and more relaxed than usual. They did at 
least do `(Theta Wave) Inductor' well and people danced that I'd never 
expect to dance to spacerock, but I have definitely seen them better, 
and hopefully will again at the end of the month in Hitchin. I had a 
good time anyway, you know, but Hawkwind would have been better and 
that ain't always so :-) Yours,
				 Jon


Ob12": The Cramps - _Smell of Female_
-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk